This blog is produced by the Consortium for Project Leadership at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for anyone interested in the practical application of leadership to project management. We aim to publish meaningful articles by various authors on a monthly basis focused on stories about lessons learned in leading and managing projects.

Friday, June 23, 2017

photo by Emilie Reutenauer; permission to reuse under terms of GNU Free Documentation License and under CreativeCommons

While frequent communication has a vital role in the
early identification of problems, coping with unexpected events often
demands
quick
action. Certainly, project managers may need to use creative
improvisations to quickly deal with such events. In fact, Brian Muirhead, who
was responsible for the development and launch of the Mars Pathfinder flight
system, had this to say: “Everybody understands the need for a plan…. But in a
world of Faster, Better, Cheaper, improvising should be seen as an inseparable
part of planning, the other half of a complete process.1" However,
most
unexpected events faced by today’s project managers are not associated with extreme
contexts
and constraints requiring excessive improvisation (for more
on the importance of improvisation,
see our blog story from September 2014. What
they do require are immediate and agile responses.

During our consulting workwith numerous construction project managers, we watched them repetitively respond with agility and take immediate actions to cope with
unexpected eventsthat frequently plagued their projects. Here are four brief examples:

The blackout curtains to be installed in a large
hospital were supposed to hang somewhere between 1/16" and 1/4" off
the floor. In several rooms, the curtains were not meeting the requirement
because the floor was not level. After discussing the problem with the
project's carpenter, the project manager decided that the inconsistent curtain
height could be compensated for by using metal beaded chains and connectors.
After receiving approval from the client, the project manager made a quick trip
to the local retail store and purchased the parts needed to complete the fix.
The issue was resolved in less than four hours.

The steel supplier fabricated the support steel for
some air-handling units using outdated drawings. The steel arrived on-site
before the mistake was caught. The project manager was left with two choices:
Send it back and have the supplier fix the mistake (at no cost), or have the
team members fix it in the field. The project manager, along with his
superintendent, decided that even though fixing the mistake on-site would cost
the team a few hours of extra labor, it was preferable to waiting several days
until replacements arrived from the supplier.

The drawings of the equipment did not arrive when
expected. The electrical contractor was threatening to stop all his underground
rough-in until the information was received. Stopping all the work would have
had a serious impact on the schedule. The team met on-site to review what
information was still missing. Based on this information, the project manager
decided to install junction boxes at the perimeter of the equipment rooms so
that a majority of the work could continue, leaving the rooms to be roughed in
at a later date.

The plumbing contractor was told to install 1.6
gallons-per-flush toilets in the building. After the original decision to use
these toilets had been made, the owner hired a new sustainability manager, who
wanted lower-flow toilets instead. There were concerns with the functionality
of the lower-flow toilets, so the project manager recommended installing a
mock-up of each type of toilet. After testing the mock-up, everyone was in
agreement on the preferred fixture. Using the mock-up to resolve the concerns
allowed them to avoid a schedule impact.

Why is it crucial to take fast action to
resolve such problems? Due to the organizational structure of projects, in which tasks
are tightly interconnected, when unexpected events affect one task, many other interdependent
tasks may also be quickly impacted. For example, affected
contractors may decide to move their workforces to other projects, making it
difficult to bring them back on time once the problem is resolved.

To be successful in practicing responsive
agility, a project manager must operate within an organizational culture that
acknowledges the unavoidability of unexpected events. According to Steve Kerr,
Chief Learning Officer of General Electric, “The future is moving so quickly
that you can’t anticipate it…. We have put a tremendous emphasis on quick
response…. We will continue to be surprised, but we won’t be surprised that we
are surprised.”

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What is "Living Order"?

Embracing the "living order" concept is the first practice of project leadership. Leaders must be comfortable leading in today's environment of constant change. Bergson (1907) identified two types of order: the traditional concept of perfect geometric order, and living order -- which can be messy, even chaotic, with project problems and surprises in an evolving organization.